Days of Darkness (29 page)

“My father had discovered,” Howard wrote later, “that Tom Baker was giving him the worst of a deal by which Baker had contracted to take off some timber on shares [another version of the root of the trouble]. So I went down to George Baker's and proposed that we settle our trouble by means of arbitration, before there was serious trouble. Baker agreed, and we reached an agreement which I thought was favorable to our family.”

Regardless of the terms, or who acted as arbiter (some say it was
Judge John Wright), the two men reached an agreement, shook hands, and seemed relieved to have found a peaceful solution to the matter. Unfortunately, neither Howard nor Baker seems to have informed their families out on Crane Creek of the agreement, at least not at once.

Newspaper accounts at the time made Baldy George Baker appear to be something of a mountain saint while James Howard was depicted as a born killer, a feared marksman, and a man of violent temper. Actually, there is no record that either man had previously been involved in any act of violence. On the contrary, Baldy George, while a big, tough man, was the generally well liked father of fifteen sons whose main failing seems to have been a tendency occasionally to drink too much, a very common fault. It was told of him that, shortly after the war, he got drunk at a party, passed out, and was dumped into a coffin recently made by the host who, not knowing he was so ensconced, piled a bunch of harness on top of him. Awakening, George felt of his enclosure, concluded that the worst had happened, and cried in a woeful voice, “Dead! Oh, dear God, dead and in hell! And they're going to hitch me up like a horse!”

“Big Jim” Howard, tall and broad-shouldered, was a quiet, somber thirty-two-year old former schoolteacher whose tight-lipped expression made him seem somewhat forbidding and who seemed to have little levity about him. Governor Bert T. Combs (1959-1963), a Manchester native, recalled in 1991 seeing Jim Howard, years before, walking down the street from his home, carrying a sample case like any other salesman.

“He was a tall, well-built man,” Combs recalled, “a handsome man. Wore dark gray suits and usually a bowler hat, and in the winter wore a long black overcoat that made him look even bigger than he was. I don't remember hearing much about him one way or the other, except that he had been in some trouble. As a lot of people had. He had worked in a store in Manchester, and was a shoe salesman. He traveled all around the towns in the region. He'd take orders and send them in to the company to be filled. Polite, friendly man as far as I knew. We surely weren't afraid of him.”

But word of the agreement between Jim and Baldy George had not reached Crane Creek when, the next morning, the Howards finished making up a raft and were preparing to shove off for Frankfort on the rising waters of the South Fork of the Kentucky. On the other side of Crane Creek the Bakers were pushing logs into position for a raft of their own. No one had made any move to resume the troubles of the day before, and when noon came the Bakers nodded cordially as they left for dinner.

But they were not concerned with the noon meal. With Tom as he arrived at his home were Charlie Wooten, Jesse Barrett, and Tom's brother Wiley. Tom nodded to his wife and said to James, his eighteen-year old son, “Come on.”

“Where we going?” asked James.

“There's something we have to do,” said Tom. But James seemed to sense what was afoot and complained that he had been feeling sick all morning. Tom looked at him for a moment, then turned and walked out, the others following. James lay down across the bed, but his mother came and stood over him.

“Get up from there, you sorry thing,” she snapped, “and go with your daddy.”

James got up. His mother handed him his rifle, and he followed the others, who were walking rapidly and silently up the road.

Back at the lumber yard, the Howards cast off the lines to their raft, and Israel, Corbin, and a man named Davidson waved and shoved off for the dangerous trip downriver.

“You be careful,” shouted Bal.

“You all the ones to be careful,” called Israel, leaning into the big sweep oar as the current caught the raft. In a minute, as the raft cleared the bend of the river, Bal, his son Wilson, Burch Stores, John Lewis, and the Shackleford boys got on their horses and started up Crane Creek toward the Howard home.

It was a bright, soft April afternoon, the trees in new foliage, the waters of Crane Creek filling the narrow valley with a spring sound. As the group cantered past the home of Gardner and Cythena (called Thena or Theenie) Baker, Thena came out and rang the bell that hung from the top of a tall pole in the front yard, the kind used to call workers in from the fields.

“What's Thena doing ringing the bell now?” Wilson wondered aloud as they rode past. They didn't have long to wait for an answer. As they approached a turn in the road about two hundred yards past the Baker home, from the top of a low, brush-covered ridge a volley of shots suddenly crashed out.

Wilson Howard fell, riddled with bullets. Burch Stores had his head practically blown off. Bal Howard, hit in the upper chest, fell forward across the neck of his horse, which, fortunately for him, reared and bolted back down the trail, as following shots ripped through his clothes. As he fled, the ambushers reportedly ran from hiding and finished off Wilson and Stores, though Wilson, shot six times, lived for almost four hours and, according to the Howards, identified the Bakers as his murderers. The Howards also claimed
that the Bakers robbed the bodies of their victims, but this is unlikely; the Bakers were not robbers.

Bal escaped, along with John Lewis and the Shackleford boys, but he was badly wounded, and as he reached Gardner Baker's house he slipped from his horse and fell to the road. Jesse Barrett said later, “If old Bal hadn't been riding that fast horse of his I'd of got him. He was the one I was after.” The killing, incidentally, did not seem to shock too deeply the reluctant young James Baker. He later killed his father-in-law, perhaps finding he had a talent for it.

And then a curious thing happened: As Bal lay bleeding in the road, Gard and Thena Baker hitched a mule to a wood-runner sled, went down to the road, and hauled him up to their house, where they bandaged his wounds as best they could and sent word to the Howards. (Years later Ernest Sester of Clay County said that his father, John Sester, coming down Crane Creek, saw Gard and Thena come down to help the wounded Bal Howard. “Thena set down there on the road and took Bal's head in her lap while Gard went to get a sled to take him up to the house,” Sester said. “Bal opened his eyes and looked at her and said, Thena, tell me why you rang that bell.' And Thena just looked away and said, ‘Some day I will.'” She never did.)

Thena and Gard later helped the Howards retrieve the bodies of Wilson and Burch Stores. Why would they do this, after Thena had obviously conspired in the murder by ringing the dinner bell? But then, why did she ring the bell? Gard and Thena Baker were religious, gentle people, fond parents, and trusted neighbors. Gard was a deacon in the Christian Church, and Thena was active in mission work. All four of their sons—Frank, Horace, Lloyd, and Ben—graduated from the University of Louisville law school and established sound law practices. Stanley DeZarn tells of how neighborhood children loved to visit the Baker home to read the
Courier-Journal
and the
Pathfinder
magazine or to hear Thena tell stories of the early days. Perhaps it was a matter of family loyalty.

At any rate, they cared for the wounded Bal until Howards arrived to take him home. The Shacklefords took a roundabout way home to avoid the Bakers. At the time they thought Bal was dead.

Jim Howard was at work in the store when one of the Shacklefords rode into Manchester, leading Bal's blood-stained horse, and told him the bad news. According to later reports, he told Jim that all three had been killed and that their bodies were lying in the road, where the buzzards or hogs might get to them. Jim was furious, not only because of the murder of his father and brothers but because he felt betrayed by Baldy George in a way that almost made him an accomplice
to the murder of his own people. He and Baldy had reached an agreement and had shaken hands on it, a gesture not to be taken lightly. And that, Jim thought, had led his kinsmen, when they heard about it, to let down their guard. He did not know which Bakers were involved, but he had no reason to assume that Baldy George, head of the clan, had not taken part or given his consent to the ambush.

Early the next morning Jim rode out toward the family home on Crane Creek. Accounts of what followed were typical of newspaper and magazine stories of the time. According to Harold Wilson Coates: “For two days the bodies of the slain men lay in the roadway, their relatives and friends not daring to visit the scene of the encounter for fear of running into another ambush and sharing a like fate. It was at this time that Jim Howard determined upon action. Grabbing his rifle, he set out for the site of the ambush, his aim to avenge. …”

Munsey's Magazine
in 1903 offered a more lurid account:

Then Jim Howard, son of the head of the family, started forth to kill. He learned that Tom Baker's father was away from home. The elder Baker was one of the most beloved and esteemed men in that part of the state. It was his boast that he never carried a weapon. Jim Howard knew it was safe to attack him.

They met on the road, and Howard ordered Baker to dismount. Falling to his knees, he pleaded for his life. He begged the young man not to plunge the county into a deadly feud, and solemnly swore that none of his family had killed the two Howards. A shot was the reply, and a bullet pierced Baker's thigh. A second disabled the other leg, making him helpless. Jim Howard, the second best shot in a community famous for its marksmen [the writer didn't say who was first] stood before the white-haired, defenseless old man and shot him again and again, using nice skill to avoid a fatal spot, yet not missing. Twenty-five bullets pierced Baker's body, and he bled to death, living only long enough to tell who had murdered him.

Horace Kephart in his
Our Southern Highlanders,
published in 1913, used much the same version: “Thereupon Jim Howard, son of the clan chief, sought out Tom Baker's father, compelled the unarmed old man to fall on his knees, shot him 25 times with careful aim to avoid a vital spot, and so killed him by inches.”

Alvin Harlow, author of
Weep No More, My Lady,
added some dramatic dialogue to his version: “Jim Howard met Tom Baker's father, a stalwart man in his later fifties, in front of a country store and levelled his gun at him. ‘Get down on your knees,' he ordered, his handsome face distorted with passion. ‘You laid the plot to have my people killed, and I'm going to kill you!' ‘Don't, Jim,' cried the old man. ‘I
didn't have anything to do with it. You know I tried to settle things peaceable.' But the cold glare in Howard's eyes, a professing Christian who didn't drink or even use tobacco, did not waver. ‘Down on your knees, I said,' he commanded.” And so on.

There is no evidence that any of this has more than a casual acquaintance with the truth. Baldy George Baker, the pathetic old gray-haired saint of legend, was actually only fifty-two years old, stood six feet tall, and weighed around 225 pounds. And he was certainly not known for going unarmed. He was no troublemaker, but he was the strong leader of a tough clan.

What seems to have happened is this:

The morning after the murder of his people, Jim Howard rode out toward Crane Creek to retrieve the bodies of his kin, see to their burial, and visit his family. As the oldest surviving man of the family, that would have been his responsibility. Near the Laurel Gap post office he rode by the home of Wiley and Lushaba (Shabie) Baker. Wiley was a brother of Bad Tom and was suspected of being one of the killers. Shabie was a Howard from Harlan County before her marriage. She was one of three orphans adopted at an early age by John D. Coldiron, who ran a store a few yards from Wiley and Shabie's home. Shabie was on the porch, washing clothes, when she saw Jim riding past but did not consider it reason to warn the Bakers. That could indicate that Howard's reputation was not as violent as described if, indeed, he had any reputation at all. Or it may have been that she sympathized with him. He was, after all, her first cousin, and she is said to have told Wiley a few days later, “If there's any more Howards killed, I'll poison you.”

But when Jim reached the Laurel Creek post office and store he found workmen making two, not three, coffins, and learned that his father was still alive, while the bodies of Wilson and Burch were being prepared for burial. So he turned toward his family home on Crane Creek to see his father. But near the Boston Gap cemetery he was fired on from ambush and retreated to the Willow Grove school. He knew he couldn't go up Crane, past the Baker home, so he took another route and, near Collins Fork, was shot at again. Trying to figure out how to get home alive, he went back to the store and stood talking to John Coldiron—”so mad he looked crazy,” according to Mrs. Coldiron—when a young girl standing nearby said, “Well, looks like Baldy George is out early,” and Jim turned to see the head of the Baker clan, astride a large bay horse, not twenty yards away.

Years later, according to Stanley DeZarn, Coldiron, then living in Indiana, gave Jess Wilson an eye-witness account of the shooting.

Jess told me that he had been wanting to talk to Coldiron because he had witnessed the shooting. He told Coldiron that he would like to come and see him about it, and Coldiron said he'd be glad to talk to him, so when he was in the neighborhood he went by to see him…. And from what I got from Jess, what he said was this:

‘Jim Howard was standing in the road talking to me and a couple of others when somebody said something like “Wonder what old Baldy George is doing out so early”—something like that, and when Jim looked up the road there was Baldy George, not twenty yards away. Jim was standing by his horse, and he reached up and grabbed his rifle, and about the same time Baldy George saw him and grabbed his rifle and slid off his horse. And Jim shot him. Jim was shooting a .45 x .90, and the shot went right through the horse's neck and hit Baldy George in the stomach, and Baldy went down in the road. Jim didn't say anything but walked over and saw for sure he was down. Some people in the store came out and carried Baldy George into the store and laid him on the counter and sent for a doctor. I read later that Jim said they asked him if he minded if they carried Baldy George in and got a doctor, and Jim said no, he was just trying to protect himself, but I don't recall that. Two doctors came out from Manchester and operated on Baldy, there on the counter of the store. Took out his bowel and sewed it up and put it back again, but he died the next day.'